By coincidence, last night for grins I dusted off Randall Jarrell’s classic 1952 satire of higher education, Pictures From an Institution. Its description of the cliche-driven president of the fictional Benton College, Derek Robbins, reads exactly like what every college president today sounds like. This passage is one of the highlights of the novel, parts of which sound not unlike Claudine Gay’s resignation letter today …

And so we can update the query: If it were not for brave diversity hires like Claudine Gay, how can this world go on?

[Steven’s not kidding. There isn’t a scintilla of remorse in Gay’s resignation letter, and she blames her ouster on racism rather than on her demonstrable incompetence and scholastic fraud. Indeed, she even tries to give herself credit for fighting “hatred” on a campus deluged by unchecked Jew-hatred and intimidation. It’s almost performance art. — Ed]